.:The Best Part Of ComicCon:.

People have been asking me "What's the coolest thing you saw at ComicCon," and so far without fail I continue to offer the thrillingly geeky response: "Stan Lee!" which is a crowd pleaser and that is why I keep saying it.  And that's not to say it isn't true -- it is -- by virtue of the fact that Stan Lee is Stan Lee: icon, idol, inspiration.  I was admittedly disappointed by more than a few aspects of the Stan Lee autographing session.  However, I realize this is kind of the equivalent to saying that you only got to hi-five Abraham Lincoln, or Muhammed Ali only punched you in the face once, or Angelina Jolie only spit in your mouth.  Greatness is greatness, and to me (even despite controversy) Stan Lee is greatness, and getting to be in the same room with someone I admire that much made me want to poop, cry, and explode all at the same time.

Kiran got us 4 day passes to the entire ComicCon event.  Baller!

But the coolest and most interesting things about ComicCon for me don't translate quite as well to other people, I don't imagine.  Not without some explanation, at least.  The really genuine, internally meaningful experiences there were all contained in Artist's Alley.  There were many things that were overwhelming about my first ComicCon -- the sheer number of fans, exhibitors, cosplayers -- but Artist's Alley took the cake.  It's one thing to see someone's artwork in print.  In some ways, it really dehumanizes the artist when their work is cleaned up, colored, mass produced and fired off into a world full of more cleaned up, colored, and mass produced work.  I LOVE comics, and comic book art, but it is easy to sometimes become desensitized to the fact even the comics you're not really interested in ever reading, much less buying at the comic shop, they all started with some person scratching a pencil onto paper in a room somewhere.  And that that act, and the skillful completion of that act is AMAZING.  There was SO MUCH good art there.  I was blown away by artwork of artists I'd heard of and didn't even think I liked.  I was knocked over.  And not only that...you get to TALK TO THEM.  Ok, granted, I was kind of just walking around, dragging my jaw on the floor, so it was rare when I got to mumble any verbiage at anyone -- but when I did, most of the artists were all really friendly and responsive.

First day, waiting to get in.

Here are the highlights:

Thursday was the first day of the Con.  The main floor, where exhibitors, toy and gaming companies, and comic book companies set up their wares and displays is the 'trade floor' -- and it is massive.  The crush of people at the entrances and exits was just too much.  My buddy Kiran (to whom I owe this entire experience) and I found it a bit annoying to navigate the crowd, so after a quick look around, we split for Artist's Alley. 

Artist's Alley, day 1.  Not even close to the mob scene it was the following days.

This isn't really considered the main event, but in my mind its the biggest reason to be there.  A lot of the guys I wanted to see immediately didn't set up until later, so we wandered a bit and after a few passes, we saw that David Mack had arrived and was set up.  It was probably about ten years ago that I stumbled onto 'Kabuki' and bought several random issues at a point where I was only marginally still interested in comics and hadn't gone out of my way to buy anything in years.  The artwork was so stunning, I was compelled to buy it.  Fast forward ten years later, and I'm standing in front of the guy, and he's smiling at me and I'm trying not to blurt out something creepy like "I want to BEEE YOUUUU!!!!" so instead I smile back and tell him how much of a fan of his I am.  I immediately buy a print, with a poem on it by Neil Gaiman, which he signs.  And then he just gives me a trade paperback.  And he gives Kiran a trade paperback.  And he signs them both.  We're kind of like...what?!  There was another guy talking across the table to David Mack, with the poise and posture of familiarity that suggested he too was in the industry, and upon appraising our amazed faces says something like "That's how he get's ya -- he gives you the first one for free, so you'll come back and buy another."  I kind of wander off, awestruck.  Somehow I find the presence of mind to tweet about it, and then an hour later David Mack favorites the tweet.  If that was the entirety of my ComicCon experience, if it had ended right there, I'd have been happy.

Stuff I bought from David Mack.

But it just kept going.

Friday was a long day.  I don't have any clue what attendance numbers were, but if I had thought there were a lot of people on Thursday, then Friday's numbers had to be somewhere around a gagillion.  My main goal for the day was to make it to the "Creator Connection" which was a panel suggested to me by my writer friend, Jon Carroll, who had also traveled from Buffalo for the Con.  It was hosted by Buddy Scalerra (formerly of Wizard magazine) and a panel of creators from Pronto Comics.  Described as "speed dating for comic creators," the event pairs writers with artists to pitch and gauge interest in collaborative projects.  I was really impressed with the quality of most of the concepts.  One writer asked me about my work, when I told him I have concepts I've been developing myself:  "Why are you here, then?"  It's true, I don't need a writer.  I could write and draw my own comics, I suppose.  But his question did give me pause.  I knew I was there because I wanted and needed to be, but more than that, I have always wanted a partner to challenge and raise the level of my work.  This is the whole reason I set out to find and eventually connect with the Visions group here in Buffalo...It's hard to create comics in a vacuum.  I want someone to push me, and I want to work with talented people who will raise the profile of my work.  I want to break in.

It's a little weird to make myself say that out loud as my goal -- I'm failure prone, and it's usually because I self-destruct, so I hesitate setting actual, concrete goals.  I'm afraid the rug will get pulled from underneath me.  And then I look up all too often to see myself with big twisted handfulls of rug in my hands.

Yes, I want to make comics professionally.  My goal is to break into the industry, and work as a professional artist and writer.  Cards on table.  Could I? yes.  Will I?

We heard that Image comics was hosting a private party at a bar a few blocks away, so Kiran and I decided we were going to join Jon and Ben in crashing it.  Security was pretty light, so I don't think it was all that private -- all you had to do was say you were there for the Image party, and they let you in.  I don't know most of the creators by sight, but I guess Ben recognized a few guys.  We met Fred Harper there, illustrationist for the Wall Street Journal, who Kiran and I kept running into the for the remaining days of the Con.  He thumbed through my portfolio, and talked about his history with comics and his last project doing a window display.  He is such an artisty guy -- sort of what I think my parents would think of when they think of an artist.  Long hair, tattoos, red pants, clearly marching to his own beat evidenced in the way he talked.  He was an interesting guy to talk to, completely without affect, genuinely interested, and straightforward.

As it got later, and mingling was at a minimum, and I was tired of lugging my portfolio around, Kiran and I scrammed to drop my stuff and get some drinking done with friends.  It turned into an all-night affair, which kind of cut into our time the next day at the con.

Saturday was jammed.  Festooned with people, a writhing crowd.  Were it not ComicCon, it would have been offputting.  And as hurtin as I was from the night before, we made a short day of it.  Kiran wanted to see the Pete Holmes Show panel.  I opted out to go wander Artist's Alley again.  At one point during the day, navigating the swarm, I made passing eye contact with Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer of Captain Marvel.  I didn't know she was going to be at the Con, but I guess she was on a Marvel panel.  At any rate, I was almost elbowed into this tiny chick with bright red hair, then I'm like bleearrggh, holy shit, and then she was gone.

I saw her popping around Artist's Alley after that, and considered approaching her, but then, what do you say?

I wondered if her husband Matt Fraction was there, but in a crowd full beardy fellows, of which I am one, it would've been impossible to recognize him.

I wandered for awhile, still no less amazed at the artists and their artwork, as I paced up and down the aisles.  Though, this time, it was sort of a discouraging moment.  I was looking at just how far I have to go, skillwise, to get to the next level.  I am not practiced enough yet to work professionally.  All the time I've wasted...all the nights I've spent out drinking, all the mornings I've spent in hungover...that was the distance between me being good, and me getting work.  That was the distance between being in front of the table and being behind it.  I am not without talent.  I am without the hard work and dedication.

I decided to mope over my glaring flaws near a fire exit.  Fred was there.  We talked briefly, before he began to draw, inspired by all the art he'd been taking in during the day.  Telling, the difference between our reactions.  I moped further.  This is how much farther I have to go.

Sunday was another short day.  It was the day I "met" Stan Lee.  I didn't really meet him.  I want to complain about it so you can see how shitty and disappointing it was, and also see how I still came away from it walking on the ceiling at the same time.

I wasn't mad that it was a slaughter line.  We were expeditiously herded through a line that wound through several rooms, and it was at this point that the ideal of my actually having meaningful words with Stan the Man about the influence and significance his creations have had in my life began to disappear.  Maybe, just maybe, I'd still be able to get a handshake. Or a wink.  Or a nod.  But the line moved frighteningly fast.  Kiran and I clutched our Stan Lee variant covers of Superior Spider-Man, as we were flung through the line...the only item I could find at the con that wouldn't cost me the rest of my money.  I'd have much rather had a poster, or a post card, or hot dammit, a Stan Lee written book in my hands, but as the signing time rapidly approached, the variant cover book was all that I could find in the few places I knew to look.  Kiran asked if I wanted to go ahead of him so he could take a picture -- knowing how much something like that would mean to me.  And as we got to the table, there was little, old Stan ripping out autographs like a machine.  Bam. Bam. BAM. BAM!!! One assistant to take the book, one to slip it to Stan, one to, I don't know, brace the table so it wouldn't collapse in front of such greatness? My book leaves my hands and is signed and passed along before I even get to the table, where this kid in front of me is just standing there, with his signed memorabilia in hand, holding up the line, interrupting an autograph to get a fist bump from Stan Lee.  And I'm standing there, screaming in thought "Dude, get the FUCK out of the way, you're stealing my MOMENT." And then it was done and I collected my comic and it all happened so quickly, jolted, and awkwardly that there was nothing left of the moment of which Kiran was even remotely able to take a picture.  It was so utterly anti-climactic.  I couldn't leave it at that, though.  I leaned in towards Stan and told him something about being an inspiration to me.  Which, being 90, he didn't hear.  But the aide bracing the table?  Well, from his snort, it was clear he heard the remark.  I'm actually going to delete the line I wrote after that, because its really not fit for public consumption, but let's just say that guy made me mad.  You're going to WORK at ComicCon and snort at the fans?  Yeah, good luck with that...

Anyhow, even being disappointed with the way you got to be in the same room with someone you revere...in the end, you still got to stand in front of them and mumble something stupid in their direction, and it is awesome.  We meandered in a fog for a bit after that, feigning attentiveness to the displays and distractions around us, but really, we were just high from seeing Stan Lee.

There was nothing else we wanted to do, agenda-wise, so we went back to Artist's Alley.  I went back to David Mack's table.  Kiran got a couple prints, and I got another volume of 'Kabuki'.  We both chatted with him for a moment, mentioning we'd been there the first day and were impressed with his generosity.  He signed everything, and I told him again how awesome it was to meet him and how inspiring his artwork has been to me as an artist.  I think I even shook his hand.  I left his table thinking that I need to come back next year and that by next year I better work up a portfolio I'd be proud get his honest opinion on.  He was incredibly gracious with us, again.

I tweeted about it again.
He retweeted me.
I thought I was going to spontaneously combust.

ComicCon was a whirlwind.  I was exhausted.  I was incredibly grateful for the experience.  And I was ready to leave.

You can only take so many high notes in row, before your brain implodes.

Avengers Blank Cover Project...

All right, so, i guess I'm averaging about a post a month, huh?  Well, better than nothing I guess.  I have been taking my time with this Avengers blank cover I am working on for my local comics creators group, Visions.  Mostly because of the pressure created by some of the really great covers the other artists have been pumping out, and also because this is the sorta thing you only get one try to do right.  I am not the type of artist that can just sit down to a project and whip out a well composed drawing.  Even with all the thumnailing, sketching, planning and composing, I still sometimes find I'm not overly happy with cover-style pieces I've tried to do.  On top of that, there's always going to be that element of the unexpected once you actually put pencil to paper, no matter how long you've delayed the actual act with meticulous preparation.

At any rate, I wanted to post a scan of a "mostly done" front cover for the Avengers blank, just to show everyone how I've been keeping my pencil busy recently.  I'd rather make a post about the process it took to getting here, but once the thing is said and done, I'm sure I'll have time to do that.  I've also decided that I'm going to do a drawing for the back cover as well, which will feature Captain America and Thor.  But for the moment, here is the front, featuring Tony Stark/Ironman and Bruce Banner/the Hulk.  Enjoy.

The poses are based on some artwork by Alphonse Mucha, the reference material I will be including in a more in-depth write up in the future.  

Also, I recently did the drawing you see in the Header at the top of this blog, which I will just repost here for shits and giggles:

Forteana, Goddess of the Anomalous

'Forteana' isn't really so much a character as she is a mascot for the sci-fi/horror universe I have been planning for a few years.  She is called Forteana after the author Charles Fort, who is kind of considered the pioneer of creepy.  He compiled data that he felt the scientific community of his day was purposefully ignoring because it did not fit their paradigm.  Weird rains of blood (?), fish, and other organic and strange materials falling from the sky...that sort of thing.

At any rate, the Forteana Universe is the universe in which stories related to the Mothman and Indrid Cold characters you've seen around here are intended to take place.  Forteana's image signifies the Forteana 'line' of comics I hope to one day produce.


Thanks for looking, friends.

-P

The Hard Way (updated)

So, part of the point of this blog is to share the discovery of my comics-making method -- the "how" part of it.  Since I don't have any art training past high school (aside from a couple figure drawing classes and a half of an oil painting class for which i never really painted anything), and zero training in sequential storytelling, I will be making a lot of mistakes.  But, from what I'm told, mistakes are good, and they are how you learn.

So, I'll be sharing some mistakes.

As you may have seen from earlier posts, the 2nd Visions Comic Art Group meeting was this past Saturday, to which many excellent artists showed up with their two to four page samples from one of the two scripts provided to us.  I got in a bit late, so I didn't get a public 'review' of my work really, but passed around what I'd brought, unfinished as it was.

The first page of my two page sample was a literal hack job -- I've already posted a few pictures of it, and I'll do so again now, just so you can get a look at its horrid glory.

Oh God, what have you DONE?!

That's page one.  I did a rough thumbnail to block out the panels, and the figures and camera angles they would include.  About half the content in the panels changed as things went along (resizing for space, readjusting according to the photo references I was gathering, etc.), but I guess that is fairly normal.   I tried full sized rough pencils on a sheet of drawing paper, but I wasn't really happy with what was showing up on the page -- too lazy, too dry, too loose.  Too rough, even for a rough.

But I thought maybe some were keepers, so instead of just starting over, I decided I'd replace the few panels that could've been better.  A few panels turned into EVERY panel, and I stuck myself with the above.  

At least I was happier with how the images came out this time -- obviously it's constrictive to work within panels, and the way I'd laid things out, I wasn't giving myself very large panels to work within anyhow.  But these roughs seemed better, and gave a better sense of what I should be including.  I told myself this process was practical, when it really may have been more practical just to scrap what I had, start over, and trace the stuff I wanted to keep with the lightboard...turns out I didn't want to keep anything anyway.

And that's how I got to this interesting paneling style.

The next idea in my mind was to do a set of finished pencils, which is what I really wanted to bring to the Visions meeting, however, time for many reasons did not permit.  Even though the meeting's now passed and gone, I intend to finish the pencils anyway, and turn them into something inkable.  

So, I did this next:

lightboard...an elegant weapon, from a more civilized age.

I slapped that page onto the lightboard like so, and dropped a piece of bristol board right into place, first tracing the panel outlines, as seen below...

boom

Then, because the initial unsuitable rough pencils were still underneath those neat little panel-flaps, I couldn't just trace my desired panels straight onto the bristol board -- because i was getting two sets of pencils sandwiched together.  So I removed the panels and organized them onto the lightboard itself.

this took too long.

Then, FINALLY, I started to trace them over onto the bristol.

yeah, that's what it looked like

And now I'm doing "finished pencils" -- first finding the edges of my blacks, and then filling them in...

(disregard my bare foot trying to photobomb this pic)

...while I know I don't have to pencil like this, it's hard for me not to because I am used to inking my own work, so thoughts about that stage really start to take shape here -- "what is this image going to look like in high contrast?" I'm always asking, and that's when I start worrying as I'm laying pencils down...should this be a guide for my inks?  Or should I just be drawing like I draw?  And do I even need this "finished pencil" stage? Can't I just mark out all of my blacks with a pencil and then just ink it and erase later?

Um, technically, uh yes, yes I could. 

I'm just not super comfortable yet.  I want to be at that level, and it would help my speed a whole heck of a lot if I could just go straight to black and white without an intermediate stage, where I deal indecisively with the possibilities offered by a gray scale that I won't translate into inks anyway.

Perhaps I will try the expedited inks thing on the secord page, but for now I'm going to stick with the method I've chosen for this first page, just out of the hope that the extra attention and time invested will help me when it comes to the final product.

We'll see what happens, and as always, I will keep you updated.

===============UPDATE!===================

All right, I've finally gotten around to more or less "finishing" the pencils for the first page, and they look like this:

this is as done as it's going to get right now...

still a bit rough in places but it contains all of the elements I was hoping to get down before I moved onto the second page.  I can't describe to you how much I want to start the process over so that I can hopefully streamline things, and eliminate the redundancies that occurred with the first page.  The roughs for the second page gave me far fewer challenges, and the initial pencils came out pretty clean as it was anyway, so hopefully doing a finished version will be much simpler.  I hope to have some elements for page two down in the near future, and I'll share them when I do. 

cheers.

PB

Rough pencil samples for 2nd Visions Comic Art meeting...

If anyone is interested in seeing the pencil roughs I brought to the second Visions meeting, here they are -- two pages for Carl Doody's "Dreamweaver" superheroine/adventure character.  

I hope to complete at least one page of finished pencils this week, as these roughs are...well, pretty rough.  First page especially gave me trouble, as the script was challenging, but I am happy with what I've done here storytelling-wise with the page count to which I was (not necessarily) limited.

page one: police caught in gang shootout, mist rolls in, gang members hallucinate their worst fears...

page two: policemen look on as thugs are rolling around reacting to some unseen affliction,  they move in to detain them, Dreamweaver casts spell from the shadows, thugs are rounded up, Dreamweaver uncloaks, reverts back to her civilian identity as Aislin Adams.

More thoughts and drawings to follow soon....

in progress

sooooo...hello there.

I have been drawing, I just have not been posting at all.  Lots of legitimate and illegitimate reasons why.  At any rate, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things again here, and with the next Visions comic book art group meeting on the 23rd, I figured now was a good time.

So here's a sneak peek at my process:

Here is a look at my drawing table.  See? I've been working.

Since I've never drawn comics before, I'm trying to work out my process a bit here, with a couple sample pages we're supposed to have ready for the meeting on Saturday.  I really don't exactly know what I'm doing except -- take a story, then make it look like comics.  This is pretty much my rule of thumb.  I have been "studying" the medium over the last couple years, which is to say instead of just breezing through pages, I am actually paying attention to what the artists and writers are doing.

My other rule of thumb is to try to incorporate interesting angles and poses where I can.  It just catches my own eye better, and if there's one thing I know I dislike in comics, it's when an artist overuses really static "blocking" and unvaried "camera" angles.  I don't mean decompression -- which I actually enjoy as a technique.  But one thing I've come to learn from reading some amateur comics in my ComiXology app is that my eyes will give up on artwork that isn't trying.  Maybe "trying" is the wrong word.  Let's say, instead, the work of artists who are content simply to display renderings of muscles and boobs in panel after panel.

I've been chipping away at a retro-style title page for "The Damned," featuring Mothman and Indrid Cold, which I've posted elsewhere, and which you can probably see in the Twitter bar to the right.  98% of the inks are done for that, and I'll finish it with some lettering, and scan it, and probably color it at some point in the future as well.  I am mostly happy with that, and feel like, after a couple years of drawing Mothman, I've just begun to comfortable grasp how to draw his fur.  I looked at the lions in the first part of Hellboy: the Third Wish, by Mike Mignola to see what he did to represent fur in his genius, streamlined style and it helped quite a bit.  I'm not completely happy with what I've done, but I'm happy that I feel like I now have something to reference, and help me "get there."

The rough artwork above is for two pages of a sample script written by my friend Carl Doody for his "Dreamweaver" character, a mystical female adventurer/superheroine.  I have one page of pencil roughs done, and have to have finished pencils by Saturday.  I have been slacking, and need to jump on it.  I am hoping to get the second page of roughs done tonight, and then we'll go from there.

Working in panels is awkward for me, I am discovering.  Which is why you see that every panel on that page in the middle was razored off of another piece of paper and then taped down to the original rough pencil attempt.  It is not a very expeditious way to work, but for the moment it is a method I can wrap my skills around until I grow.

More art soon, I promise.
Back to work.

Some Pencils.

The holidays are over, and thus my last best excuse for not doing artwork has evaporated.  What follows are the (nearly) completed pencils for the first page of House of Asterion.  You can read the script, found in the first post, but the images are a bit abstracted and meant to be introductory.  Again, the panelling here is modeled on the Golden Rectangle.

Obviously the values of the first panel dominate this image, but when I get to the next stage, I hope to push the patterns further into the background and soften them with color.  Very few of the dark areas will be inked, and I'm mostly envisioning the first panel in a sort of David Mack style mixed media/watercolor.  The following panels I hope to turn into moody little esoteric looking Mignola-esque tiles.

I am rather proud of how this first panel turned out, and although most of the pattern work will be covered with text boxes, I think it really grabs the eye, and helps push it to the second panel.  The lettering is mostly Greek:  the first band of letters (moving inward from the human figure) is the ancient Greek word for Minotaur, followed by its Etruscan counterpart (the Etruscans apparently had a less villainous characterization of the Minotaur in their belief system).  The next band in is the ancient Greek for 'Asterion,' and the last band displays the Greek for 'monster,' and the modern Greek for 'man' (because the ancient Greek word wouldn't fit).

So.  With that step done, it's on to page 2, which, if all goes as planned, should be very different but hopefully as visually interesting.  I've got it mapped out already, but I won't know if it works until I put real effort into a finished pencil draft.

Additionally, I've been toying the idea with creating panelled art pieces -- sort of pop-arty -- like a page torn from a comic book that doesn't exist (or doesn't exist YET.)  I'm always interested in the ways that not traditional comic book artists blur the lines between an art piece and a cover or page of comic.  Maybe one of these pages will end up like that, or perhaps something from the superhero stuff that's been gestating in my brain for years now.

We'll see.

As for my next post, which I hope to have ready in a span of time that does not at all resemble the interval between this and the last post, I may throw some sketches of some superhero redesigns I've been playing with, just to mix it up a bit.  Fingers crossed.

Ok, coffee break's over.  Everyone back on your heads.

-P